Former L.A. County Sheriff’s Sergeant Gets Life in Prison

With hard-hitting investigative stories, spirited criticism and provocative cultural coverage, L.A. Weekly has become the nation's most widely read alt-weekly — and an important voice in Los Angeles. The paper's writers have dominated the L.A. Press Club's Journalist of the...

Reacting to a stark spike in shootings that has left six people dead in the past two weeks, Salinas leaders brought in the uniformed cavalry and elevated their peace-building rhetoric. But the beefed-up patrols will likely only quiet gunfire temporarily.

A $15 million judgment against New Orleans' DA's office after a man who spent 14 years on death row was found not guilty of the crime for which he was convicted has new District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro on the financial ropes. And that may only be the beginning.

In letters to him, Bruce Barcomb compared Rodney Alcala to notorious serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, and begged him to spare the victims' relatives from a painful trial — including Barcomb's own elderly mother, who was undergoing chemotherapy.

Rodney Alcala, the UCLA fine-arts grad, former Los Angeles Times typesetter, amateur photographer and film student of Roman Polanski's is believed to have used his charm and access to entrap and murder seven women and girls, and to rape several others.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was wrong about American lives having no second acts, of course — and if you’re looking for proof, you could do much worse than to read the profiles in this year’s L.A. Weekly People issue.

HIV infections in the United States have been dropping in nearly every subgroup that is commonly tracked, with one exception: The numbers have been ticking up steadily among black men, ages 14 to 24, who have sex with men.